Thursday, January 10, 2008

What a day: Naegele Out, Leipold In, Moore on Waivers, Koivu On Deck

So Bob Naegele sold his controlling interest in MS&E and the Minnesota Wild to Craig Leipold, late of the Nashville Predators. I suppose "agreed to sell" is more apt, as it's not technically official yet.

My hat's off to Bob for bringing the NHL back to Minnesota. I harbor no ill-will towards him for selling his investment at a profit - that's what smart businessmen do.

Mr. Leipold intrigues me as a guy who appeared to care a lot about hockey, but was smart enough to hire good people and let them do their job in Nashville. He can't be blamed for the lack of corporate support, as I'm sure it wasn't like he and his guys were NOT out there trying to drum it up. Blood from a stone and all that.

In other news, TSN is reporting that Dominic Moore was the casualty to Mikko Koivu's triumphant return to the starting lineup. Talk about a win-win! We're no deeped at center, at least in terms of the number of centers in the lineup, but whenever Mikko returns to game speed we'll be so much deeper.

So no Mikko tonight against the Wings, but he's good to go tomorrow night at United Center (against an ailing Blackhawks team).

POI

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Nick in New York (NiNY) is just a guy with a computer and a love of hockey. And a wife and two daughters whom he adores. And a decreasing ability to metabolize beer in a way that doesn't, er, add to the bottom line, as it were.

Feel free to toss him an email with any thoughts on the blog, or the sport.

Mason...you don't really want to mess with Mason. He's nasty with the writing skillz. And can drop some ridic culture pulls into his narrative. Lover of haiku.

Mason can be reached at: jaredmas@gmail.com

Did you know that no two zebras' stripes are the same? Well we have a zebra here at HTP, and his name is Doubles. Only he's a hockey zebra - and he's here going to share his great wealth of hockey knowledge from an on-ice official's standpoint with you. Feel free to read him in Chris Rock's voice.